THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 233 



sell had met the reclamations of Secretary 

 Seward. 



From the July day in 1862 when the &quot;No. 

 290&quot; passed out of the Mersey on her &quot;trial 

 trip/ to become the redoubtable Alabama, 

 responsibility for the damage done by her to 

 American commerce was formally and syste 

 matically charged upon the British Govern 

 ment by Seward and Adams. The long lists 

 of vessels captured and destroyed that came in 

 to the State Department at Washington were 

 duly submitted to Earl Russell, with intima 

 tions that indemnity would be expected from 

 Great Britain. Because the operations of the 

 Alabama were so far-reaching and so successful, 

 they assumed very great prominence in diplo 

 matic as in popular discussions, and by the end 

 of the war the term &quot;Alabama claims&quot; was 

 commonly used to designate the whole mass of 

 complaints against the British Government for 

 the favor that it was alleged to have shown to 

 the Confederacy in violation of its profession of 

 neutrality. The use of the term in this broad 

 sense reflected and stimulated a feeling in Amer 

 ica that British delinquency was of a kind that 

 could not be atoned for by mere financial com 

 pensation for the losses caused by the Confed- 



